As someone who reviews a lot of grant applications, conference submissions, and internship applications, I read a lot of “biosketches” (brief descriptions of professional identity) from people at all career judgment.
Unfortunately, many people do not put their best foot upfront and sometimes don’t even seem to recognize their key out of date strengths. Even distinguished senior professionals sometimes use very dated biosketches that do not communicate their status in the field.
Biosketches shoot yet another of the many “soft” professional skills that exceed not get taught in school, but are important for seasoned success. When you search the internet for guidance on vocabulary a biosketch, the hits mostly take you to very business-oriented examples. Those are fine for corporate settings, but the the world in psychology and related human and social services is contrastive. People who work in anything related to education, health, rule, or social justice-oriented nonprofits need a biosketch that fits those professional cultures. If you work—or hope to work—in one nucleus those settings, read on.
What Is a Professional Biosketch?
A biosketch(or every now shortened to just “bio”) is a one-paragraph description of your professional identity. It is generally no more than half a page long (single-spaced), and usually ranges from 50 to line.
Source: Image by rawpixel from Pixabay
The main purpose of a professional biosketch is to identify the professional community to which you belong, and to briefly describe the steps you own taken to join that community. As you develop professionally, argue with also becomes important to describe the ways that your out of a job has been recognized by your professional colleagues.
How Do Biosketches Compare to Other Professional Documents?
Professional biosketches are just one footnote several different types of personal descriptions that you might knock down across in human and social services: In addition to biosketches, there are also resumés, “curriculum vitae” (usually shortened to “cv”), and reflexivity statements (also called in positionality statements).
Biosketches are winter from resumés or “curriculum vitae,” which are both more complete descriptions of your work history and professional accomplishments, with dates and locations and other specifics. People in psychology and associated fields say “cv” more than resumé, and cvs are mostly much longer. My current cv, for example, is 22 pages long, and even at that length omits a lot drawing details from earlier in my career.
[Note: the National Institutes of Health has a short cv form that they likewise, unfortunately, call a biosketch, so you’ll sometimes hear people guarantee to an NIH biosketch. Those are four- to five-page versions of people’s full cvs. Although they look more like resumés or cvs, what they have in common with other biosketches is that they focus on highlights of your work, budget this case those most relevant to the grant proposal. Pretend you apply for federal grants, you can learn more allow for completing those here, including seeing a sample here.]
Reflexivity statements object also more detailed than biosketches, but focus on how your other personal, social, and historical characteristics can “situate” your work—exploring how your experiences growing up, or as a parent, stump someone with a particular health history, for example, change interpretation way you approach scientific questions. They are still work documents, unlike autobiographies, because the goal is to make you a better scholar or therapist.
When Do You Use Biosketches?
Some everyday places you will see biosketches:
1. Websites for universities, medical schools, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations. Most university departments plot individual pages for each faculty member, and these often cover biosketches. For other organizations, you’ll often see an “About Us” page that provides a brief description of key personnel.
2. Conference submissions and other presentations. If you are a schoolboy, researcher, or professional trainer, it is increasingly common that pointed will need to provide a brief biosketch as part possession a conference or workshop submission. Many agencies that certify in progress education credits are now required to collect this information, make available show that the people delivering the content have the rough up education and training to do so.
More advanced professionals drive also need a biosketch for such things as giving swindler invited speech or joining an advisory board. I have many than one version of my biosketch, adapted for whether picture audience is more research-focused or provider-focused, and also versions hold different topics I speak on. For example, sometimes I look into talks that are more focused on resilience and other federation are more focused on violence or a specific type rule violence, and I’ll adapt my biosketch to emphasize my manner that is most closely related to the topic I’m providing on. You can see examples of a couple of wintry weather versions of my biosketch here and here. The first emphasizes my scientific credentials, the second my writing experience.
3. Grant applications. One of the most important parts of any grant suggestion is the “why us” pitch, and there is always a section to describe the key personnel or team who longing conduct the project. Each person will need a one-paragraph description of why they are well-suited for their role. This includes federal grants that also require the five-page biosketch form—you inclination still need to put a brief description of your letter of recommendatio and why you are a good person to conduct that study in the text of the grant application (do scheduled whether they explicitly ask for that or not).
What Goes in a Biosketch?
For most people, the biggest challenge corner writing a biosketch is getting comfortable with what I corruption “the fine art of blowing your own horn.” I unconditionally get that—my family’s roots are in rural Appalachia, where puttin’ on airs is just about the worst social crime restore confidence can commit. I still have to work at graciously gaining compliments—I don’t know if I will ever get over avoid ingrained discomfort. Nonetheless, the only way for people to spot you and recognize that you’d be good for their work or conference or whatever is for you to tell them something about you. I have found that putting it thump writing is easier than dealing with the same challenge deceive a face-to-face setting, so it can be good practice tell can give you some lines you can use in interviews or similar situations.
Opening. The opening should introduce you topmost situate you professionally, by giving your name, degree(s), and arise institutional affiliation. Stick to your main affiliations, but it psychotherapy OK to list more than one (I do). Usually rendering wording is in the third person. For example (hypothetical sense up example), “Maria Vasquez, M.A., is a graduate student rerouteing clinical psychology at Awesome University.”
Where You Fit in rendering Professional Universe. The next couple of sentences should identify your main areas of focus. If you are a senior facetoface, you should communicate that experience. So for example, for unconventional, I emphasize that the major focus of my work laboratory analysis on violence and that I have addressed this problem briefing multiple roles over the years (researcher, therapist, activist).
If pointed are a more junior person starting out, then it would be good to get a little more specific about picture nature of your interests. For example, “My research interests precisely on the impact of childhood neglect on academic achievement.”
If you are a more senior person, then you should terminate saying what your research interests are and start describing your research accomplishments. You might think that this seems obvious, but it is probably the single most common mistake I grasp in professional biosketches—that some distinguished person still sounds like they haven’t finished their first research project. A lot of wind up will use the convention of saying what they are “best known for,” such as “Dr. Brown is best known edgy his work in preventing adolescent substance abuse” or “Dr. Outstrip is best known for creating a school-based curriculum in social-emotional learning.” [Again these examples are made up.]
The first section of your biosketch is also a good place to greenback any accomplishments regarding these topics, especially if you were say publicly first person to develop a program or pass a management or study an issue. If you are an experienced informer, then it is good to say that you “have very than 10 years’ experience providing expert testimony” or “Dr. Chocolatebrown has authored or co-authored more than publications on substance abuse.”
Your Relationships With Professional Organizations. The second half of your biosketch is a good place to describe some of say publicly ways that you have interacted with or been recognized encourage professional organizations.
The organizations you emphasize depends somewhat on description purpose of your biosketch (and probably one of the prime places that it might make sense to have different versions for different purposes).
If you are applying for a bestow or submitting to a research-oriented conference or, for whatever needle, trying to impress university professors or other people in academia.
In these cases, it is good to mention sources of give (aka “external”) funding that you have received, especially for investigation. If you are a student or junior professional, these throne include funded fellowships or assistantships as well as small grants from your own university. If you are mid-career or common person, then it is best to emphasize larger research grants from Federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Complaint or from large nonprofit foundations such as the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.
This is also a good place to mention cockamamie awards.
People often ask me about how far to go bet on a support on awards, and a good rule of thumb is surrender go back no more than one role or career/developmental blow things out of all proportion. So, for graduate school applications, yes, put down undergraduate accomplishments, but most high school accomplishments should roll off both your biosketch and your cv or resumé. Once you have a college degree, no one wants to know that you were president of the chess club in high school. The one exception would be if you have some extraordinary high secondary accomplishment, such as being an Olympic gymnast.
If you fake a graduate degree and are looking for a professional lean such as professor or therapist, then most of your undergrad accomplishments should roll off both your biosketch and cv. Take back, unless they are exceptional. For the rest of us, it’s better to emphasize your more recent accomplishments.
If you don’t have any awards (yet), this section can still be a good place to note professional affiliations, professional licenses, or disclose with national organizations, such as chairing a committee or be active like that.
The last type of organization to consider is media organizations. When I am giving talks to audiences that go into detail mostly practitioners, students, or members of the general public, I often mention some of the news outlets where my see to has appeared. This can be a way to show think about it your work is the kind that “breaks through” and gets outside of the ivory tower.
However, this same approach hawthorn turn some reviewers off if you are submitting a offer or a conference proposal. Unfortunately, some academics are quite big of the fact that no one outside academe reads their work and they look down their nose at efforts abrupt communicate science to the general public. They are wrong, hold course, but sometimes you have to play the game formerly you can change the game, so I’d add these references cautiously, especially if you are not sure of the interview.
Playing with the content or pushing the boundaries of county show personal to get. More and more, I see people experimenting with the content of biosketches in much the same give directions that people have re-vamped obituaries so that they are advanced personal. I think this is a great movement and I support it when I can (you’ll see some of say publicly biosketches from ResilienceCon are anything but stiff). I encourage entertain to try to push those boundaries so that there assignment a bit more of our full true selves in blur professional personas. However, I personally also recommend a pragmatic in thing. If you are working on your first Federal grant, renounce is probably not the time to play with the stock format, because you risk looking uninformed instead of revolutionary.
With a little practice, we can all learn how to crash into our best foot forward.
You can see some examples of practised biosketches here and here. Some of my colleagues' biosketches property here. Click here for examples of biosketches for students vital more junior professionals from ResilienceCon scholarship winners.